About Us

Our Vision

Our vision at SuperGrans is to have skills and knowledge flowing between generations and communities.

Our Mission

Our Mission at SuperGrans is to be able to pass on skills for safe, healthy, low-impact, budget living. To help people to flourish through a volunteer based, home and life skills mentoring service; in-the-home and at hands-on workshops.

Core Values

Absolute Integrity

Valuing Individuals

Passing Skills

Non-judgement

Kaitiakitanga/Responsible Stewardship

Absolute Integrity

We aspire to respect other people’s perspectives, and endeavour to encourage trustworthiness and honesty in all relationships. We encourage all clients and staff to “remain true to themselves” despite circumstances.

Valuing Individuals

Every member of the SuperGrans family, clients and staff, is valued. We approach each other as equals with different knowledge and skills.

Passing Skills

We are happy to support and listen, but our core business is passing skills and knowledge. While we do what we can to offer skills and knowledge, we know we can’t force change.

Non-Judgement

We approach others with an open mind. We know we’re all doing the best with what we’ve got.

Kaitiakitanga/Responsible Stewardship

We take on the responsibilities of our roles as community workers, in enabling the flow of knowledge and skills between generations. As such we aspire to honour the past and enable the future.

Strategic Plan

History

"I had been to the food bank and watched them come out with their food parcels and then sit on the step and take out all the things that they couldn’t use like the rice, the flour and the porridge stuff that they had no idea what to do with and I thought ‘ugh, why are they doing that? At least they handed it back but jeepers that is half their food parcel gone'. So that’s why we sort of came up with the idea, “well this is where we can probably do the most good.”

- Erin McMenamin

SuperGrans Manawatu was founded in 2005 by SuperGrans Aotearoa and Sue McAllum was employed as the first co-ordinator. The SuperGrans Charitable Trust orginated in the Lower Hutt in 1994. An organisation known as Mature Emplyment had a lot of women on their books who were trying to get back into the workforce or were looking for work so they wanted to come up with a scheme that might employ some.

Working under Mature Employments Services, SuperGrans was able to work out of their offices for a couple of years but then became a charitable trust in our own right and from there we just blossomed. In the valley and in Wellington, SuperGrans went into the homes and began teaching anything and everything to do with home making. Our original logo at SuperGrans refelcted this, showing parents with children sitting on a hand which is giving them a hand up; not a hand out, but a hand up. We like to stress that we don’t do the work for the community but we stand beside them and work with them.

In 2014 SuperGrans Manawatu updated their motto to 'Helping People Flourish' to reflect the way we work holisitcally in the community, connecting mature volunteers with people wanting to learn the skills they need to build their reslience and quality of life. The logo was updated to show the roots of a plant supporting the growth of the delicate tendrils, enabling the plant to flower and flourish.

SuperGrans is now in seven areas around New Zealand. We have SuperGrans in Dunedin, The Hutt, Porirua, Wairarapa, Palmerston North, Horowhenua and Gisborne.